Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
Following the lead set by Canadians, Australians deal their own Trump-lite candidate and party a heavy rebuke.
After Mark Carney played the Trump card to full effect in Canada last week, turning around the electoral fortunes of the Canadian Liberals, a similar scenario played out for another member of the Anglo-sphere this past weekend.
On Saturday, Australians voted in their national election. And while the Trump effect was not as prevalent in Australia as Canada (how could it be, Australia isn’t being threatened with annexation and is an ocean and hemisphere away?) the result is another sign that the desire for radical change, so dominant in 2024, might not be as strong in 2025.
Setting the stage
Peter Dutton, leader of the Liberal Coalition, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, leader of the Labor Party
Prime minister Anthony Albanese (in power since 2022) and his center-left Labor Party had spent much of the election trailing the lead opposition party, the conservative Liberal Coalition led by Peter Dutton.1
Dutton initially styled himself as a mini-Trump, labeling him as a dealmaker and big thinker for his Gaza plan. He had a shadow minister for government efficiency (an Australian version of DOGE & Elon Musk) and announced plans to cut over 40,00 public sector jobs. The Liberal Coalition also spent months aping Trump’s rhetoric, attacking Albanese’s “woke” agenda. Critically, Dutton vowed to abandon work-from home and have public workers back in the office full-time.
When Trump took office, the polling averages showed the Liberal Coalition with a ten point lead over the incumbent Labor party.
Much like the Canadian election though, this race turned on a dime when Trump re-entered office in January. Australia is a military ally to the US (through both the AUKUS submarine deal, along with the UK, and the Quad security group, along with India and Japan), and the issue of Chinese influence is much more prevalent in Australia (though largely relegated to the sidelines of this election).
Generally speaking, Australians disagree with most of Trump’s key foreign policies.
Suddenly, as Trump took a flamethrower to the multilateral alliance systems valued by Australians, Duttons attacks began to backfire. Instead of doubling-down, Dutton spent April distancing himself from Trump, including walking back his DOGE-lite plan to cut 40,000 federal jobs and apologizing for his plan to bring federal workers back to the office.
Australia’s own domestic issues
But the election was not solely about Trump. The cost-of-living, specifically the price of energy and housing (see chart below), has soared in Australia in recent years.
The price of housing across Australia has exploded this century.
Despite being one of the foremost LNG exporters in the world, Australians have been crushed by high prices at home (which has increased 60% since 2020). To try and appeal to voters, Labor introduced energy subsidies to support households while Dutton promised to reduce the tax on gasoline and concentrate on nuclear energy.
Since 2016 (the year of Brexit and Trump), Australia’s standard of living has not kept up with the UK or the US.
Dutton’s performance during the campaign, including woefully underestimating the cost of eggs during a national debate (he said $4 for a carton, when the average price is $8), gave some voters the impression of the Labor Coalition being out of step with the rest of the country. In a poll of undecided voters after the debate 50% said Albanese won, compared to just 25% for Dutton. As one voter put it, “if you don’t know the price of eggs, how can you represent us?”
It also didn’t help that Dutton’s attempt at seeming like a regular person injured an innocent cameraman.
At a base level, conducting a campaign this marred in errors is never a good sign. One Australian political columnist said Dutton, “did not have a single good day during the campaign, his policies didn’t hang together.”
Put it all together, the Trump effect + the poor Dutton campaign, and by the eve of the election, Labor had nudged ever-so-slightly ahead of the Liberal Coalition in two-party polling.
In the days leading up to the election, while the Coalition held a slight edge in the initial primary vote, when it came down to a two-party race, Labor took the lead.
How does the Australian electoral system work?
In Australia, there are 150 House of Representatives elected via Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) where voters rank each candidate in order of preference.
In Australia’s RCV, voters must rank all candidates listed on the ballot form for their vote to be valid and a candidate must get 50% of the total vote to be elected.
How does counting work? After everyone has voted, ballot counters go through and tally up the number of first place votes each candidate received. The candidate with the lowest number is eliminated. The votes for this candidate are re-allocated to the second-place on their ballot, followed by a second count. Again, the candidate with the lowest number is eliminated, and the votes re-allocated. This process occurs until a candidate has won 50% of the vote. See below for an easy illustration of how this works.
Ranked Choice Voting, an example
Historically, around 38% of representatives have been elected based on first preference alone (i.e., they won a majority on the first ballot), and 92% of the candidates with the most first-preference votes won.
What happened?
It turns out the analysis of the pre-election period and run-up was the most interesting aspect of this race.
Because the actual election, at least from a seats won perspective, was a romp: Albanese and Labor won the most seats in a landslide.
Despite a portion of the vote still being counted in a handful of seats, the confirmed results thus far give Labor a larger majority.
Labor won, but only came in first on ~35% of the ballots. Independent candidates, known as the “Teals”, and the Greens combined to finish in first on 25% of the ballots. Remember, since Australia uses ranked-choice voting, the results indicate that the vast majority of Teal / Green voters had Labor higher on their ballot than the Coalition. Teal / Green voters therefore go to express their support for their party at the top of the ballot, and then rank Labor above the Coalition, ultimately feeding through to a Labor win.
Formed this decade, the Teals are a group of mostly women who seek to rescue Australian democracy from the issues plaguing much of the world - specifically right-wing populism and misogyny. As one Australian commenter noted, the Liberal Coalition’s campaign, especially the idea of ending work-from-home, went against many of the most important issues for women today.
Labor won two percent more of the first-ballot vote in 2025, while the Liberal Coalition lost nearly four percent of its support.
The tepid first-ballot support for Labor can be read a few ways. One, more optimistic view is that voters want a Labor government, but that they want them to pursue a more radical agenda to address the cost-of-living issues, while also keeping the focus on things like climate change.
The other more negative view is that these voters were really just voting against the Liberal Coalition (and by association, Trump), and were not overly enthusiastic about Labor’s platform. A lot of the post-election commentary and interviews with Australians indicate the Liberal Coalition never had a chance.
"I've never seen such a laughable portfolio of policies … worst portfolio anybody's ever brought in Australia," said swinging voter and IT consultant David Thompson. He felt the policy offerings from the Coalition were "shambolic" and many were "thought bubbles" that were backtracked within days.
[….]
[Peter] Dwyer felt Peter Dutton admired US President Donald Trump, which bothered him.
"I think the Coalition were very, very unwise to sort of align themselves to a large degree with [Mr Trump] … he's proving himself more and more to be a financial instability globally."
This sentiment was echoed by Mr Thompson, who said: "Nobody wanted the craziness that is 'the Donald' in Australia."
An ending coda
Much like Pierre Poilievre in Canada, Dutton lost the seat he has held for 24 years. But the most ironic part of all of this for Dutton? (PTO emphasis added)
US President Donald Trump says he is "very friendly" with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was re-elected over the weekend in a landslide victory.
"We have had a very good relationship," Trump told the Sydney Morning Herald at the White House on Sunday, in his first remarks about the Australian election.
But the US president was less familiar with the other electoral candidate.
"I have no idea who the other person is that ran against him," he said of conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton, who many saw as Australia's equivalent to Trump.
Poor Dutton. Loses a national election, his seat, and can’t even get a mention from the guy he spent months emulating.
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Cheers!
Yes, it is odd both of the main parties start with the letter “L” and have ostensibly left leaning names.